Interactive Marketing and PR:  Star Trek provides a good visual

Today I continue a recent discussion about the challenges in aligning PR and interactive marketing. The battle lines are drawn with the two sides competing for the hearts and minds of clients.

Consider these two quotes:

The first is from Jonathan Kopp, Global Director, Ketchum Digital.

PR firms are poised to lead the way in social media because they approach conversation influence from an earned media perspective — finding existing story lines and figuring out how to make their clients’ point relevant. PR firms with a digital development capability can use visual and dynamic storytelling to add a deeper layer of engagement–digital assets designed specifically for social media engagement.

The second is from Michael Kogon, CEO of Definition 6, an interactive marketing firm based in Atlanta.

In the past, PR has typically been responsible for communications with internal and external audiences; developing the communications strategy and leading the execution. For most organizations, interactive marketing includes all the “online” marketing stuff. Today, with so much more communication taking place online, it’s more common to see progressive interactive agencies managing all online communications efforts, particularly around blogging and other social media.

So which side is better equipped to manage a client’s social media strategy?

I appreciate the battle lines.  Each has a lot at stake.  But I am not taking sides because I believe each has a critical role to play.

The debate reminds me of a famous Star Trek episode.  The characters in question were in fact more similar than they realized, but their differences in perception drove them apart. The two characters fought to the end, unable to reconcile differences.

OK a little poetic license, but my point is that interactive marketing and PR are very similar.  They are focused on increasing engagement and use the same tools to get there.

But while their services complement each other – positioning/branding,  messaging/key words, impressions/click throughs, storytelling/application building – their strategies and success metrics are very different.

As a result, we create great tools that don’t necessarily extend PR’s finely crafted messages.  At the same time, the messages PR creates don’t always evolve to reflect the way users search for information. And we tend to overestimate PR results and underestimate interactive marketing’s. Our individual clients may be happy, but an overall social media strategy may suffer.

And so the larger question for me is not who wins the battle, but how do we tap the talents of both sides to align marketing and PR objectives?  How do you create a strategy that incorporates key words and messaging, click throughs and impressions and storytelling and technology?  My next post begins to take on these questions.

In the end we may need to reframe the debate and demonstrate how PR and marketing and are extensions of one another, not opposites and not independent of each other.

Let me get back to you.

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Comments ( 4 )

Good piece, Dan. But I think it skips too quickly over an important point. You might be forcing a false dichotomy by pitting interactive agencies against modern PR firms.

For example, Ketchum boasts a full digital development capability that rivals stand-alone interactive agencies. In this way, our clients get interactive work from a digital shop that’s housed within a PR firm, thereby getting the best of both worlds without compromise. At Ketchum Digital we offer digital development that’s geared specifically towards earned engagement across the social web.

And the digital content we develop has the benefit of being promoted and pitched by our PR professionals to online media and bloggers alike from Ketchum offices around the world.

A one-stop shop, integrated, solution combining the best of digital development, social media and media relations.

Back at ya,

Kopp

Jonathan Kopp added these pithy words on Sep 14 09 at 6:01 pm

Thanks for an informative post, though i have to admit, i was more taken by being reminded of a classic Trek episode i had forgotton…

Mat added these pithy words on Sep 16 09 at 4:03 am

LOL Mat – Yes it was very compelling episode. I debated using it but I am glad it brought back memories.

Dan Greenfield added these pithy words on Sep 17 09 at 5:57 pm

Jonathan,

I agree. Integration is critical. I wasn’t suggesting that PR can’t do interactive or interactive can’t do PR. There are overlaps. I was just pointing out the battle for positioning. I was wondering if one side would be the winner or whether both sides would meet somewhere in the middle tapping each other talents.

Dan Greenfield added these pithy words on Sep 17 09 at 6:04 pm